Well, obviously it's not a good idea for schools to allow access to redtube, so they are necessary to keep schools clean, but as an art student, many a times I see incredible photgraphs I want to print off a school computer having found a picture on google, when, surprise, that website is blocked! Blogs are also blocked for me, which is stupid. If you can detect inappropriate content in other things, why can't you admit the clean blogs? Are only companies who can afford to buy a website allowed to have a voice in schools? Are personal opinions damaging to our fragile young minds? Of course they aren't, it's bullshit and you know it.
And think about youtube. Where else are you going to find videos of Tienanmen Square for a history lesson, The Masque of the Red Death for an English lesson, a video tutorial for drawing tree bark in an art class? Nowhere, that's where. Youtube is an incredible educational tool, yet 99.9% of school filters block it.
There are blogs of people with controversial ideas that we aren't allowed to access. We aren't allowed to look at another individual's right to speak, which is protected by the first amendment. How is that constitutional?

Ok I could write more but I am tired as all hell, just had to get this out there and see what you guys thought

It's certainly necessary. I "worked" in my old school's IT department assisting "repairs" of computers (They kept a cupboard full of HDDs with pre-installed shit). I used this time to secretly disable the custom firewall on their proxy servers, which allowed all unauthorised requests from school computers to go through.

INSTANTLY, I noticed that in my classes nobody could concentrate on their work, because they were too busy fucking around on Facebook and Youtube to actually get any work done. I quickly put the firewall back up the next day after the IT guys were informed by the teachers, and I noticed that everyone had gone back to actually completing the work again.

I can pretty much say that this proved to me that it's necessary in schools, but never in houses or in public places. Pretty much every High School student out there acts like they have a severe case of ADHD and can't completely any work at all without external assistance.

I do believe that it is necessary, especially when students are able to use laptops (having the screen not be seen by the teacher). There will always be students that do actual work on the internet, but most people will instead go to sites such as Facebook, YouTube (for funny videos, not actual educational videos) and random game sites. I say this from experience (from viewing others, and I do on occasion myself), many people are able to bypass filters set in place, but this leads to the next point:

The system my state's department of education and training uses isn't very effective. Sure, the whitelist blocks pretty much every proxy site you can think of, but people bypass this by using other people's internet logins from alternate education (such as tafe college logins, which are far less restricted). It's funny though, all it should really take to prevent such a thing from happening is checking which account is logged in on the computer, and comparing it with the login that is used to access the internet.

Finally, yes it is sometimes counter-intuitive such as for research purposes. However, if a teacher wants to look for resources teacher logins have barely any restrictions, making it easy for lessons where everyone is looking at a smartboard. It's not actually that bad though for personal research, research is still very possible.

Schools that want that you work at school on your schools stuff instead of watching anything not related to your work. Truly shocking. Until recently they couldn't control what was on there so they blocked the entire thing.

They should maintain it how it is, however, enable an option for certain categories (ie have it impossible to do this for porn and stuff) to enter the site, although with a report being sent to the staff with a quick note from you on why you are accessing it. You can access the resource you want when you need it, and if it's innocent, it'll later be unblocked, but if it's not, then you'll have some sort of punishment - restriction on use of the feature, or tighter internet controls on your account

I think it's unnecessary at least when it comes to me. I'm almost never off-task, I do my work well and whoop! I can't access something that I want to do after because it's blocked. However the internet block is easy to get around so if you're going to be like China do it right.

Necessary. I was a student in school, and I liked to do all of my work before going on my "free time". I noticed that whenever the teacher assigned something, everyone just pulls up their dumb facebook/youtube/flash games window and does whatever, and 3/4 of the class ends up not doing the work, and I bet that is very annoying for the teacher.

But not shit like YouTube which I may actually need to use for my work. Also Wikipedia was also recently banned (and unbanned quickly after the amount of compalints) and also any sites containing LGBT content are blocked under "Alternative Lifestyles".

Isn't it a liability thing? A school doesn't want to answer parents' questions of "How was my son/daughter exposed to such filth?!"

Liability would be one reason.
And as DireAvenger said nobody gets ANYTHING done without the blocks in place. At my school the blocks weren't working for a day (or maybe purposely disabled) so Facebook, YouTube, anything normally blocked, wasn't. People were fucking off all day.

The one my school uses is useless. They originally had this SWGFL filter that banned individual site, but people kept finding new sites. Now they have this Impero one that blocks based on URL, page content etc. However using https bypasses it so it's basically useless.

I'm fine with blocking certain content (porn), which my school does, but the blocking company blocks a hell of a lot of stuff which are useful for education. I'm fine with the blocking of reasonable content, but there needs to be a way to contact an admin quickly, to get a site unblocked if it's educational. (e.g. Al Jazeera was blocked at one point)
Youtube's blocked at my school unless your teacher contacts the admins to get it unrestricted due to lessons needing it (e.g. media studies) or you're sixth form. (I am)

Funny thing is that the guest wireless (student laptops, tablets e.t.c) and the wired/school laptop wireless at my school both have different people operating the filters on them. The wired / school laptop wireless one is operated on-site, but the guest one is operated by the local council.

I do use proxies if I need them, though, as the school admins take hours to unfilter content, when it may be necessary for lessons. (and I'm guilty of having DF on a memory stick in case I get bored to hell)

The one my school uses is useless. They originally had this SWGFL filter that banned individual site, but people kept finding new sites. Now they have this Impero one that blocks based on URL, page content etc. However using https bypasses it so it's basically useless.

Heh, HTTPS did work to bypass some blocks at that school. But the portable TOR browser bundle can get around it all. Plus android phones and Tethering work

I'd think the most reasonable approach would be to address the student body about taking down the blocks, but with surveillance, for a short period (1 week?) and see if they can be trusted.
It could work with small schools.

Blocks are definitely necessary. I'd probably get a lot more work done if TVTropes and Facepunch were blocked. It sometimes overreaches, but if there's a blog or article or imbedded video on a news site you need to get to, the school IT guy is usually cool enough a dude to lift the filter for you.

The Gov't school I go to now has a really annoying blocking system (ofc, since it's the government after all), but it's easily bypassed by just holding down F5 and refreshing the page a shitload of times whenever something's blocked (fail on their part).

My school uses it for things that make sense, like porn and piracy. What they also do is block shit that has nothing to do with preventing learning. They block: mozilla.org, portableapps.com, anything that has to do with games, online shopping, 'personal websites', and Spotify.

If we ever had an item we needed access to that was blocked we just asked the teacher and they let us use his or her account for a minute. Otherwise people just go on sites and dick around in school. I'm in college now and everyone just watches youtube and goes on facebook on their laptops- I feel like I'm the only person listening to lectures sometimes.

If we ever had an item we needed access to that was blocked we just asked the teacher and they let us use his or her account for a minute. Otherwise people just go on sites and dick around in school. I'm in college now and everyone just watches youtube and goes on facebook on their laptops- I feel like I'm the only person listening to lectures sometimes.

And then you'll end up with the better grade at the end and have the last laugh.

Unfortunately there's always the people who just play games the whole time. IMO they should be able adjust the filter to individual rooms, so a teacher can un-block YouTube for there class if it's needed. maybe also have a list of the current websites everyone's on on the teachers computer.

Unfortunately there's always the people who just play games the whole time. IMO they should be able adjust the filter to individual rooms, so a teacher can un-block YouTube for there class if it's needed. maybe also have a list of the current websites everyone's on on the teachers computer.

My school has that feature. It's actually really nice for when the teacher wants to show us a fun video related to the class.

If 99% of the students weren't complete and utter fuckheads then yes, it would be unnecessary. One day there was a big power outage in my area, the next day we go in, there's no filtering because the whole system got restarted. So everyone blares dumb music via youtube, and wanks off to their facebook, and that's my point. Give the average highschooler freedom like that, and they're too fucking irresponsible to NOT browse social networks instead of doing their work.

The filtering at my highschool is over the top balls to the wall retarded, though. I swear they just keep a list of "not blocked sites" and block everything else, it is literally THAT restrictive. I can honestly not do any legitimate research on those computers, because wikipedia, the only useful research site that isn't blocked, is "a bad source of information because...uhhh...people can change it....and write wrong things....and stuff...I'M THE TEACHER I'M ALWAYS RIGHT!". I'm not even gonna start with that, I've openly debated/argued with any teacher who's ever tried to make that claim.